Change Agents, Spring 2013

Having completed collaborative research projects and digital stories about immigration during the fall semester, Finding Voice students shifted their focus to the many other pressing concerns that weighed on them both personally and collectively during the Spring, 2013 semester. Each student worked through a process of inquiry to identify one global/social issue that they felt needed to be addressed immediately. A framing question for the project was, “If you were president of the U.S. or of your home country, what would be your top priority agenda item?” The answers to this question varied greatly, ranging from deforestation to violence against women, racism to genocide, gun control to substance abuse. Experts and concerned citizens/activists came into classes to talk with individuals and small groups of students about their topics, concerns, and ideas for addressing and/or solving these problems. Students then created written and oral reports which they shared with their peers, their guests/visitors, and with their school community through the creation of lino-cut posters. Having worked through the language-development and research processes of learning how to speak in an informed and empowered way about loaded and emotionally fraught issues, students then created posters that distilled the main idea or framed the message about the issue they were focused on in a way they felt would be most meaningful, productive, and evocative for an audience of their peers and others in their local community. The images and condensed texts they generated for the posters speak volumes, we believe, and can be used to spur action, we hope. We are each agents of social change. We each have the power to learn, speak, shift the world(s) around us. There are many tools we can use to tell our stories and speak our truths. Take a look at what the Finding Voice students have to say: